State backs off some school grading rules

The state is abandoning its proposal to grade public school centers dedicated to educating severely disabled students, but not its entire plan to hold special needs children to the same academic proficiency standards as non-disabled students.

Some Northeast Florida parents of disabled children said Saturday they’re skeptical of the state’s intention, as are some school district superintendents and education advocacy groups.

“I am still baffled at this whole thing. To follow a cookie-cutter approach when it comes to children is ridiculous,” said Carrie Roland, whose 19-year-old daughter, Courtney, has multiple severe medical disabilities and is a student at Alden Road Exceptional Student Center in Jacksonville.

“How do you differentiate between disabilities? Just because a disabled child is not in a center, does not mean they have the cognitive ability for an academic proficiency test. Those children are still academically challenged,” Roland said.

Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson announced the state is backing off the proposal in a YouTube post late Friday. He wants to take proposed school grades for centers serving severely disabled students — such as those at Duval’s Mount Herman, Alden Road and Palm Avenue exceptional student centers — off the table.

“The children in your centers won’t receive a grade. Those centers don’t receive a grade now,” Robinson said in the video, directly addressing parents of severely disabled students statewide. “They won’t receive a grade moving forward, so I want to take that off the table.”

For the first time, students with less severe disabilities, however, will have their academic proficiency measured and factored into the state formula calculating their school’s grade.

Disabled students previously have taken state standardized tests — either the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test or Florida Alternative Assessment Test — to gauge their learning gains. Those gains already contribute to a school’s grade. But this would be the first time academic proficiency also would be considered.

“We actually have 93 percent of students with disabilities take the FCAT exam in reading,” Robinson said. “Surely, there will be some changes and one will be including students with disabilities in our [school] performance model.”

In addition, the academic proficiency of students learning English also will be used to determine a school’s grade, Robinson said in the video.

The state Board of Education will vote on the issue Tuesday, which if adopted takes effect immediately. The measure is an attempt by the state to meet the conditions of a recent waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law. While state public schools no longer have to meet mandated Adequate Yearly Progress student achievement goals, it must prove similar accountability.

Keeping the centers out of the school grade equation is the right thing to do, but is not enough, some said.

“Obviously, it’s a step in the right direction,” St. Johns County School District Superintendent Joe Joyner said. The district is ranked No. 1 in the state for academic achievement.

Joyner hasn’t received details of the revised proposal. But based on Robinson’s video, Joyner remains concerned, especially about making the academic proficiency of intellectually disabled children count toward a school’s grade.

Roland’s 13-year-old daughter, Victoria, is an honor student at Mandarin Middle School. Like many other Duval schools, it practices “mainstreaming” inclusion for students with disabilities. The proposed proficiency rule for students with disabilities could send a school’s grade plummeting, said Roland, a school advisory council member.

“It will really take a toll on schools.

An “A” school like Mandarin could go down to a “C,” said Roland, explaining that is unfair to disabled and non-disabled students alike. “And then you have to ask, are they even capable of raising the school’s grade?”

The state’s entire premise on the issue is fundamentally flawed, said Colleen Wood of 50th No More, a parent group seeking to improve funding for public schools in Florida.

“There is no research supporting grading special needs students to the proficiency of other students,” Wood said.

Those in Northeast Florida denounced it as “ridiculous,” “crazy,” “outrageous” and “dumb,” the original proposal that would have held a student with multiple disabilities whose greatest success might be swallowing solid food accountable to the same academic proficiency standards as a non-disabled student in advanced classes.

The original proposal would have resulted in Alden Road and the other such centers getting an “F” grade, landing them in intervene status. That would mean the center’s principal and half its staff likely would be transferred. Such a massive change would be disruptive and exceedingly detrimental to their children, who rely on the continuity, parents and school psychologists have said.

Although the state has backed off to a certain extent, some damage has already been done, Wood said.

“Unfortunately, they had to put those parents through the trauma of thinking their children would be graded, and the trauma of having to fight just so their children would be treated fairly,” Wood said.

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The article clearly states that the children with disabilities are held accountable with alternate tests. Also, every special needs child has an IEP (Instructional Education Plan) which is a legal document and must be followed. It also must document progress on those goals. That is called accountability.

Our special needs population at the middle school where I teach is diverse and their teachers and aides do a marvelous job with them. It is a disservice to them to think that these children will be held to the same standard on the FCAT as my advanced students. That is ludicrous and sets them up for failure.

The general opinion of educators at my school is that the state is setting us up to fail so they can just go ahead and privatize everything. They are not interested in the children or their well-being - just their own agenda.

Charter schools do no better and most often worse than public schools. We've had several start-ups and all but one have failed due to mismanagement of funds and/or low school grades.